sea, there is Cæsar on the shore; if I go into the sands of Bilidulgerid, there is Cæsar waiting for me in the desert; if I take the wings of the morning, and go to the utmost recesses of wild beasts, there is Cæsar before me." All this makes the condition of a criminal under the Western Empire terrific, and the condition even of a subject perilous. But how strange it is, or would be so had Gibbon been a man of more sensibility, that he should have overlooked the converse of the case-viz., the terrific condition of Cæsar, amidst the terror which he caused to others. In fact, both conditions were full of despair. But Cæsar's was the worst, by a great preeminence; for the state criminal could not be made such without his own concurrence; for one moment, at least, it had been within his choice to be no criminal at all; and then for him the thunderbolts of Cæsar slept. But Cæsar had rarely any choice as to his own election; and for him, therefore, the dagger of the assassin never could sleep. Other men's houses, other men's bedchambers, were generally asylums; but for Cæsar, his own palace had not the privileges of a home. His own armies were no guards his own pavilion, rising in the very centre of his armies sleeping around him, was no sanctuary. In all these places had Cæsar many times been murdered. All these pledges and sanctities-his household gods, the majesty of the empire, the "sacramentum militare," -all had given way, all had yawned beneath his feet. The imagination of man can frame nothing so awful-the experience of man has witnessed nothing so awful, as the situation and tenure of the Western Cæsar. The danger which threatened him was like the pestilence which walketh in darkness, but which also walketh in the noon-day. Morning and evening, summer and winter, brought no change or shadow of turning to this particular evil. In that respect it enjoyed the immunities of God it was the same yesterday, today, and for ever. After three centuries it had lost nothing of its virulence; it was growing worse continually: the heart of man ached under the evil, and the necessity of the evil. Can any man measure the sickening fear which must have possessed the hearts of the ladies and the children compo sing the imperial family? To them the mere terror, entailed like an inheritance of leprosy upon their family above all others, must have made it a woe like one of the evils in the Revelations-such in its infliction-such in its inevitability. It was what Pagan language denominated " a sacred danger;" a danger charmed and consecrated against human alleviation. At length, but not until about 320 years of murder had elapsed from the inaugural murder of the great imperial founder, Dioclesian rose, and as a last resource of despair, said, let us multiply our image, and try if that will discourage our murderers. Like Kehama, entering the eight gates of Padalon at once, and facing himself eight times over, he appointed an assessor for himself; and each of these co-ordinate Augusti having a subordinate Cæsar, there were in fact four coeval Emperors. Cæsar enjoyed a perpetual alibi: like the royal ghost in Hamlet, Cæsar was hic et ubique. And unless treason enjoyed the same ubiquity, now, at least, one would have expected that Cæsar might sleep in security. But murder-imperial murder-is a Briareus. There was a curse upon the throne of Western Rome: it rocked like the sea, and for some mysterious reason could not find rest; and few princes were more memorably afflicted than the immediate successors to this arrangement. And A nation living in the bosom of these funereal convulsions, this endless billowy oscillation of prosperous murder and thrones overturned, could not have been moral; and therefore could not have reached a high civilisation, had other influences favoured. No causes act so fatally on public morality as convulsions in the state. against Rome, all other influences combined. It was a period of awful transition. It was a period of tremendous conflict between all false religions in the world, (for thirty thousand gods were worshipped in Rome,) and a religion too pure to be comprehended. That light could not be comprehended by that darkness. And, in strict philosophic truth, Christianity did not reach its mature period, even of infancy, until the days of the Protestant Reformation. In Rome it has always blended with Paganism: it does so to this day. But then, i.e. up to Dioclesian, (or the period of the Augustan history,) even that sort of Christianity, even this foul adulteration of Christianity, had no national influence. Even a pure and holy religion, therefore, by arraying demoniac passions on the side of Paganism, contributed to the barbarizing of Western Rome. VII. Finally, we infer the barbarism of Rome from the condition : of her current literature. Any thing more contemptible than the literature of Western (or indeed of Eastern) Rome - after Trajan, it is not possible to con- ceive. Claudian, and two or three others, about the times of Carinus, are the sole writers in verse through a pe■riod of four centuries. Writers in prose there are none after Tacitus and - the younger Pliny. Nor in Greek literature is there one man of genius after Plutarch, excepting Lucian. As to Libanius, he would have been "a decent priest where monkeys are the gods;" and he was worthy to fumigate with his leaden censer, and with incense from such dull weeds as root themselves in Lethe, that earthy idol of modern infidels, the shallow, but at the same time stupid Julian. Upon this subject, however, we have two sum. mary observations to make: - 1st, It : is a fatal ignorance in disputing, and : has lost many a good cause, not to perceive on which side rests the onus of proof. Here, because on our allegation the proposition to be proved would be negative, the onus probandi must lie with our opponents. For we peremptorily affirm, that from Trajan downwards, there was no literature in Rome. To prove a negative is impossible. But any opponent, who takes the affirmative side, and says there was, will find it easy to refute us. Only be it remembered, that one swallow does not make a summer. 2dly, (Which, if true, ought to make all writers on general literature ashamed,) we maintain-that in any one period of sixty years, in any one of those centuries which we call so familiarly the dark ages, (yes, even in the 10th or 11th,) we engage to name more and better books, as the product of the period given, than were produced in the whole 350 years from Trajan to Honorius and Attila. Here, therefore, is at once a great cause, a great effect, and a great exponent of the barbarism which had overshadowed the Western Empire before either Goth or Vandal had gained a settlement in the land. The quality of their history, the tenure of the Cæsars, the total abolition of literature, and the convulsion of public morals, these were the true key to the Roman decay. CURSORY COGITATIONS CONCERNING CATS. How in the world it comes to pass that people-and worthy, good-hearted people, too, in the main-can have a single relative in existence, from the - nearest degree mentioned at the end of the Prayer-Book to a Caledonian cousinship forty-nine times removed inclusive, about whom they care no more than they do about the multitudes against whom they jostle in their everyday walks of life-that is to say, towards whom they do not feel their hearts one whit the warmer because they are relations-is to us a thing, as Celia says, wonderful out of all whooping." For ourselves, the mere claim of kindred acts as a sort of magnet upon our affections. We honour, from the bottom of our heart, that hanging together of name and line, that practical application of the maxim, that" blood is thicker NO. CCLXXXIX, YOL, XLVI. 66 than water," in a word, that better part of the spirit of clanship, which so pre-eminently distinguishes the kindly Scot from his more southern brethren. A family gathering is to us a pleasure anxiously anticipated, and fondly remembered," the day it comes is noted as a white day in our lives." We love to see the hearth surrounded by a merry circle of kith and kin, old and young, rich and poor, - what matters it? we love them none the less for being old-Heaven forbid we should do so for being poor. We love to hear the kindly mention of those far away, (for, alas! there are few such gatherings without their " vacant places,") -to mark the thousand unpretending, unceremonious, kindly little sayings and doings, so widely different from the stilted politeness and studied attentions of fashion to listen once 2 т more to the oft-told family tale-to laugh once again at the oft-repeated family joke. We sometimes begin to have serious thoughts of committing matrimony ourselves, for the sake of enjoying all this sort of thing round a fireside of our own; for this proMalthusian, anti-connubial, bachelor style of living, after all, is but dullish; and we find ourselves continually dropping in upon some brother, or uncle, or cousin, as the case may be, for a dish of tea and chat, and an hour or two of domesticity. Indeed, we always make a point of satisfying ourselves, by personal enquiry, as to the existence, health, and happiness, of every member of the family within our reach; but as their name is Legion, and we are strictly impartial in our visitations, we seldom get through the whole series under three weeks or a month. The night before last we made merry with uncle Tom, and having, in imitation of that respected relative, duly swallowed three large tumblers of " something comfortable," and kissed in succession thirteen children, from three months upwards, we made our way home, much to the indignation of our landlady, at one of those small hours which the world, by a strange perversion of the truth, calls "late." Yesterday evening, by way of doing penance for the offence, we inflicted ourselves most unrelentingly upon our brother Charles and his wife, who haven't got over the honeymoon more than a week; and where, of course, there was neither of the afore-mentioned drinkable or kissable commodities to be met with. Tonight-let us see-there is our cousin Horace's new snuggery, and our aunt Tabitha's Howqua's mixture, upon both of which we are pledged to pass sentence at our earliest opportunity. Like Desdemona, we " do perceive here a divided duty;" and how to settle the question is a puzzler. We have it: Most gracious Sovereign! may it please your Majesty's most royal golden image to decide the point for us! So-up you go-Heads, Horace-Tails, Tabitha; - Down you come (Dii avertite omen) head foremost, as we expected! -Tails-Tea, and Tabitha! So be it then-give us our hat and stick. Ah! our dear aunt, and so there you are this cold evening, "cherishing your knees," as Leight Hunt has it, before the fire. And how is the rheu matism you were complaining of the other morning?-this frosty night, we fear, bodes it no good: and what is the last new saying your favourite Poll has learned ?-and last, not least, how fares our stout old acquaintance, Sir Thomas the Tortoise-shelly? We think we hear him somewhere about the room, but you haven't ordered candles yet, and we can't quite make him out. Ah! here he is; we feel him rubbing his sleeky person against our dexter leg, to announce his grati. fication at seeing us; we hardly-think any thing under a stray canary-bird would tempt him away for the next half hour. Hark! he is purring most hospitable welcome, and now we have managed to catch his eye. Thank Heaven we were not created a mouse, for the very first glance of that eye would be enough to fascinate us! Why, it is positive fire; a moth in a dark room might singe himself at it. We would not wake suddenly in the dead of night, and see two such orbs staring upon us, for all England, Scotland, and Ireland, not to mention the Land of Leeks. We should think the old gentleman, par excellence, had been watching while we slept, to catch any awkward secrets we might chance to discharge to our deaf pillows, and patiently waiting till we awoke, to carry us off bodily on an involuntary visit to his subterraneous dominions: such eyes as those, at such an hour, might fright from its propriety the most stainless conscience that ever sweetened slumber: - they would " murder sleep," as effectually as Macbeth, for the next four-and-twenty hours at least. We positively think they would soon make us nervous even now, with their fixed green glare bent upon us; but here comes Mary with the lights, and we are relieved. So apparently is not Sir Thomas, for, albeit doubly convinced by their entrance that we are really and truly your very loving and unworthy nephew, he seems by no means best pleased with the sudden flood of light, which renders all further scrutiny on the point unnecessary. What would we not give for some Gottfried mind to "burst his cerements," and rise, brush in hand, to paint him, as he has turned him round and seated himself in philosophical meditation on the Wallsends that burn so cheerfully before us? He is evidently yielding himself up to all the luxury of a brown study: voiceless, motionless, save only a gentle involuntary pleasurable agitation of the tip of his tail: forgetful even of the approaching tea-time, and the accustomed saucer of milk: surrendered to the full influence of that mysterious sympathy between coals and contemplation, which never lets Ius look for two consecutive minutes at a bright clear fire, without throwing us into a calm, thoughtful, moral#ising frame of mind, presenting to us, * in every black promontory and glow■ing cavern, more strange and varying shapes and images than "Denmark's sage courtier" discovered in the passIing cloud, to fool her "princely #youth" to the top of his bent. Your #cat, after all, is the most truly philoso⚫phic brute: a ruminating animal is a goose to him. There is about that cat of yours, our dear aunt-sugar and cream, if you please, and a liberal allowance of both there is evidently about that cat of yours an abstraction from things real, a separation of spirit from matter, a meditativeness - a 1. θεωρία, (pardon the Greek,) which a Greek sage of the olden time would have looked upon with envy. Disturb ⚫ him not, and he will sit in that selfsame position for hours-let but this ball of thread roll within reach of his -eye, thus, and pounce! why, he is in his kittenhood again in a moment! Your venerable protégé is one of those - whom age robs not of all "smack of their youth:" hearth-rug. For thee the morning sun poureth his earliest radiance through yon eastern window, and for thee diffuseth his parting warmth on yonder back-door, where, as thou reposest, no juvenile vagabond, wantonly envious of thy felicity, may halloo on the hostile cur, or whirl from some obscure corner the treacherous brickbat. Pleasant is it to behold thee, basking in the full effulgence of the burning day-god: -waking indeed, yet not far removed from slumber-in a state of luxurious dreaminess, fancying thyself, perchance, in some feline Elysium, where the sleek race of mice faileth never, and the gentle gales wander by unceasingly, stealing odour from a wilderness of valerian. Thou art one of those who cannot be "too much i' the sun;" a true votary of the noontide-a sworn worshipper of the dog-days. Alas! that we should be compelled to class thee among those human children of the same divinity, "with whom revenge is virtue!" Nor little be thy rejoicing that thy lot was cast in these our enlightened days, rather than in the darker times of our poor, miserable, ignorant, benighted ancestors. Be thou very thankful, that, in this happy era, ancient dames may be hook-nosed, or humpbacked, or halting, with impunity, and that familiar spirits have become strangers in the land! Tremble thou to hear that time was, when the dread Father of Evil himself walked the earth after thy image, black of hue as "Our good old cat, Earl Tomlemagne, midnight; - when malignant imps, Upon a warm spring-day, Even like a kitten at its sport Is often seen to play." With all his philosophy he is no Stoic. A yard of string and an inch of ribband are too much for him any day: he is "pleased with a feather, tickled with a straw," to the latest moment of his existence. And now we think he may lap his milk, and Mary may take away the tea things; for, fascinating as is the beverage, we never allow ourselves to exceed the third cup. Why, the saucer is nearly empty - already! That ceaseless purr, and that ecstatic sweeping of the tail, might make envious the most inveterate gourmand in London: we could almost plump down upon all fours, and lap with him ourselves, the operation appears so delightful. Truly, Sir Thomas, thou leadest a happy life. For thee beameth a cheerful fire, and spreadeth a soft warm lurking concealed under a livery of tortoiseshell, wrought unspeakable ills to myriads of unfortunate chaw bacons; _ when men prophesied a mildewed harvest from every sweep of thy tail, a sickening herd from every purring intonation of thy voice; when, if thou didst frisk in thy harmless glee, thou wert esteemed to be practising minuets for the approaching Witches Sabbath - if thou didst but seize a passing mouse, thou wert only endeavouring to blind the eyes of the multitude from detecting under thy disguise the incarnation of the Wicked One. Be thou exceeding grateful that, in these latter days, thou hast fallen under the especial protection of a gentle sisterhood, whose hearts, unoccupied by other affections, throw open for thy race alone the wide floodgates of their tenderness; who consecrate for thee a shrine in every hearthrug, and appoint high-priestesses for thy service in the shape of much-enduring maids-of-all-work. For thee, kind ministers! at every return of morn, do they duly arrest the dogdrawn vehicle, far scented by thy expectant tribe, wherein, Homerically arranged on spit-like skewers, are borne the savoury morsels collected from a thousand stores for thine especial consumption: -for thee do they bend upon the itinerant purveyor their sweetest of sweet smiles, that he may select for thy favoured palate his most tempting delicacies. For thy sake, in particular, O Epicurean Sir Thomas! how many a murmuring brother and mewing sister peep anxiously forth each morning, to chide the sluggish wheels and lingering merchant! How many a fasting lap-dog whines complainingly, as he views, at hungry distance, the long-protracted gratification of thy fastidious appetite! And yet is not thy cup of sweets altogether undashed with bitterness, "medio de fonte leporum surgit amari aliquid;"-thou too hast thy share of the persecutions of this persecuting world: nay, no sooner hast thou entered it than thy perils compass thee round, and, alas! thou hast no eyes to avoid them! How often have we seen thy helpless kindred, in all the fancied security and unoffending blindness of kittenhood, dashed rudely against the flinty wall, or plunged headlong into the stagnant pool or hurrying torrent! How often, O Thames! stream "gentle yet not dull," have we marked some hapless victim, cut off untimely, and nipped in the very bud of promise, borne slowly downward on the bosom of the waves-alas! how changed! the graceful form swollen and distended with "too much of water" the innocent limbs rigid and extended in death the glossy coat worn from the skin by the action of the unpitying stream-the nucleus of a foul collection of sticks and straws, "weeds and filth, a leprous scum," augmenting as it is borne lazily on, till in the unsightly and shapeless mass the very mother that moaned for its loss would fail to recognise her offspring! Happy, ay, thrice happy, Puss was she, Sir Thomas, who was erst wont to carry thee in her maternal mouth to the sunniest spots, secluded from the prying ken of the destroyer; -who kept for thee the choicest morsel, visiting with stealthiest step thy carefully concealed bed in some well filled barn or comfortable hay-loft, till thy opening eyes grew bright, and thy young limbs waxed strong, and thou didst shoot up beneath her delighted gaze into active and vigorous cathood! But not even thus have thy perils ceased, and still art thou in jeopardy! Many sworn foes hast thou-imps of mischief in short jackets and still shorter inexpressibles "fiends in shape of boys," as sayeth the tenderhearted minstrel whose mournful dirge rang plaintively over the "expiring frog,"-who go about to do thee perpetual harm. Perchance, allured by the warmth of a more than usually genial morn, thou dost timidly peep forth into the world, unconscious of the perils which lurk beyond the pale of thine accustomed area, and art pacing with slow, happy, unsuspicious steps, along the well-sunned flagstones:-alas! unhappy animal! see you not yon evil-minded urchin before?-hear you not yon butcher's cur behind?-turn! fly! ere yet it be too late! already the well-aimed pebble is on its way, -already the growling savage in act to spring-one moment more, and Now, by the great Jupiter, a masterly retreat! Xenophon from Cunaxa was not half so skilful, Bonaparte from Moscow not half so quick! How the caitiff cur stands astounded at the leap which cleared his unwieldy carcase, and bore thee at one bound beyond the reach of his utmost swiftness! - And let thy much-palpitating heart rejoice, for the missile of thy human foe has spent its force against yon kitchen window, and a sturdy scullion is even now taking vengeance on the offender. Many a time and oft, too, has our heart bled for the hapless child of thy race, whom some puerile demon, despite her piteous moanings and despairing struggles, holds closely grasped between his unrelenting knees, till he has shod each velvet paw with a sandal of unyielding walnut-shell, and laughs to see her limp clattering away, or to mark her fruitless efforts to disengage her tender toes from their unwonted durance. Sometimes toothank heaven! but seldom-do we shudder, as we read of the atrocities of some more mature devil, some animated flint, who, for the sake of allevil gain, hesitates not to strip the furry coat from the yet living flesh, to fling aside the bleeding and quivering carcass. We have scarcely heart to |